It is very likely to reduce it, though not completely remove it. Today, there is no other way to recruit players for the mission - the mission HAS TO be announced on ch2 otherwise no one will know about it.
Let think about this as something similar to the "looking for group" (LFG) and "looking for more" (LFM) in other games, usually MMORPGs. Posting a mission is like LFM, but the mission leader has no idea who and how many are looking to join a mission, so he cannot approach them directly - he has to shout it to everyone and hope that enough players reply.
Perhaps a complementary mechanism to Earl's suggestion is to allow a "LFG" equivalent flag. In the "pickup mission" page, add a checkbox that marks the player as interested in joining a mission. The mission planner will be able to see the list of players waiting for a mission - if he sees numerous players on that list it may encourage leaders to post a mission. It will also allow him to send a PM directly to those players and invite them to the mission without spamming ch2 - either individually, or through an "announce mission" message that sends a PM to all flagged players. I would suggest to send an invitation yes/no popup form, but this will be problematic if they are already airborne (AFAIK, you can only join missions while in the tower).
Now there is another great idea! If there was a box on the clipboard map somewhere, that if a player is interested in joining a mission, then he could X it out and whom ever the mission planners are, would have some idea if enough people are in the game who would join a mission.
I run missions constantly while in this game! 98% of the time, when I am airborne, I am airborne in a mission which I have posted! One of the problems I run into is just this: when I look at the vox of my squad, 171, and I only see 2 or 3 names, 1 of which is a GV'er, I am not going to take the time and trouble to work up a mission when I know I am not going to get many, if any joiners, so I just log out and go do something else with my time.
If I could log into the game and see where there was as little as 7 or 8 guys who were interested in joining a mission, then I would be willing to go to the trouble of planning and posting a mission.
What is happening today that I see, at least in Rook country, if I am not running missions, everybody is scattered all over the map and no effort is being made to do what the game is designed to do, which is capture bases! Sure, there is always the 1's or 2's which are trying to capture a V base, or sneak one somewhere, but by and large the vast number of Rooks had rather be joining in an effort to capture a base with a mission.
Just like last night for example, when I came into the game, everybody was defending somewhere and scattered every where and there was just a little fight here and a little fight there, but the minute I started running missions, we took 5 bases, bang, bang, and then the whole Knight country started defending and we had one heck of a fight the rest of the night. If players want a fight, this proves that running missions can and does generate some heck of fights!
The Bishops don't even wait for us to capture one base, as soon as we attack something in Bish country, here comes there first line fighters, because they know we will have a large formation of bombers with escorting fighters and a great time is had by all.
Bottom line, we HAVE TO have some way of letting players know there is a mission posted besides using the text buffer! This could mean the difference in someone logging out of the game or staying!
